Are ebooks the future?

Team Udayavani, Jul 16, 2021, 6:02 PM IST

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Ebooks might be the future, but turns out reading the old school way might actually be better for you.

A meta-analysis of 33 studies from 2008 to 2018 found that those who read things on paper understood the material they were reading better and performed better on tests connected to the material — than those who read from screens. The study also demonstrated better metacognition or recognition of how well they understood the text.

It is also said that people tend to attach more importance to information presented in print.

Virginia Clinton, a professor of education, health, and behavior at the University of North Dakota in the U.S, said, “If you are reading from paper, your mind thinks, ‘This is something important. I need to pay attention to it.”

Researchers observed that sensory inputs from reading a book, which includes feeling its weight, touching its pages, and also, smelling them. It can enable us to process the information contained in it better. The deeper processing can lead to better long-term memory than shallow processing — since it leads to better recall.

Apart from sensory cues, reading from paper offers motor cues that can help the reader process information more effectively. Kerry Benson, a writer and neuroscience researcher, “When holding a book, we receive reminders of how many pages we’ve read and how many remain. We can flip pages to reread text as needed.”

According to a study published earlier this year, Screens, on the other hand, can lead to “shallow information processing” — especially when one is reading under time constraints.

Screens don’t always retain the reader’s attention very well, which leads the mind to wander. This in turn impacts the processing abilities.

The experts say that the longer and more complex a text is, the more difficult it may be to comprehend it on a digital medium.

Reading from a book creates a mental map, which enables readers to retain the information better as the spatial memory involved, and also retrieve it with greater ease because they know exactly where to find that information.